When No One Is Watching(78)

Break and build.

Night hunt.

Rejuvenation.

“Disperse!” a voice shouts through a bullhorn as the march of footsteps sounds through the street. “Disperse! Anyone continuing to riot will be arrested and puts themselves at the risk of lethal force.”

“Continuing to riot,” the man who had joked about the hospital repeats. “The fuck? Ain’t nobody rioting.”

“Everybody get inside,” Theo shouts, jogging and pulling me along toward Candace’s house. “Get inside your houses and don’t let anyone in.”

“I’m not going inside shit,” another man says. “We didn’t do nothing and—”

There’s a flash of light and a whistle where the cops stand, and then a canister is tumbling toward us, end over end, shooting smoke. It lands by the man who was talking and he reflexively kicks it, sending it back toward the growing cluster of police.

“Assault against a police officer is a felony offense,” the cop with the bullhorn says, and there’s laughter in his voice.

They charge.

It’s a short run to Candace’s, but she’s old. We start to fall behind as she limps, but one of the guys next to us scoops her up without a word and sprints to her stoop, then keeps going without waiting for a thank-you.

A knot forms in my throat as he melts into the darkness. This is what Gifford Place has always been to me—someone helping you without a second thought and keeping it moving.

This is what the people behind this rejuvenation are trying to destroy.

Jenn and Jen’s door opens and they pop their heads out.

“What’s happening?” Jen asks, her eyes wide.

“Go back in and don’t come out,” Theo says harshly.

Jen looks hurt. “I just want to help. Should we call the police?”

“Baby, go inside,” Ms. Candace says in her firm but friendly tone as she opens her own door. “Shit is about to get real, and I don’t wanna see you hurt, okay?”

Jenn comes up behind Jen, pulls her in, and slams the door shut.

Candace looks down at me and Theo. “And you two. Get in here, now. You need to tell me what’s going on.”

Her voice is a little less gentle with us.

“We have to go to the medical center,” I say, thinking about those lights that shouldn’t be on. “We’ll come check on you after. Get inside, hide, don’t let them find you.”

Candace puts her hand on her hip, her patience gone. “Girl, if you don’t stop playing and get your ass inside this house!”

That tone would have worked on me any other time, but Candace doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know that some of our friends are dead or in danger.

I think of Drea’s face, when I’d finally looked at it. She didn’t look peaceful like Mommy had. Foam had dried at the edges of her mouth and her eyes had stared toward the door, as if she’d been expecting me to open it and find her.

I hadn’t.

I’d walked past her, how many times?

I’d heard scratching in the walls. Maybe it had been her. Maybe—

“Sydney!”

Theo yells right in my face and I realize that I was starting to give in to the panic.

“Let’s go.”

Theo holds my arm as we run, and he guides me across the street as another smoke bomb streaks by us. The hospital looms ahead of us, the brighter lights of the lower floor illuminating the base of it and making it look even more imposing.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“When I saw Kavaughn, he appeared out of nowhere but it was here. If he got out, then there’s an entrance or exit we can use to get inside.”

I watch him as he looks back and forth, his jaw rigid and his shirt splattered with the blood of a man he killed for me.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “This isn’t your neighborhood.”

And I’m not anything to you.

“Maybe not,” he huffs. “But you know us strange white dudes have a hero complex. Of course I’m gonna swoop in and save the day.”

“If you don’t get killed,” I remind him.

“I’m hoping to avoid that outcome.”

I don’t want anyone else to die, but I really hope Theo in particular avoids that outcome, too. I don’t know if either of us will, given the war zone sounds coming from my neighborhood.

We skirt around the chain-link fence and he moves to touch it but then pulls back. “Either running in these jeans built up some static electricity or this is now electrified. It wasn’t the other day.”

Shit.

The cops are starting to reach our end of the block. There are knots of people tussling in the streets.

Think, Sydney.

“Remember I told you those urban legends about people getting pulled underground?” I ask. “Now that we’re in the middle of this, years and years of rumors that people have been kidnapped and dragged into this hospital start to make more sense.”

“When I did the research, I did see a brief entry about supposed underground tunnels to the hospital,” Theo says. “It was debunked, but the rumor said they were built during the war when the hospital was a factory. If those are still in use . . .”

“We were always told the mole people would get you if walked on subway grates or metal cellar doors . . .” I look over at the bodega. “Come with me.”